Thousands of farmers to descend on London after Met Police green lights ‘tractor tax’ protest

21 comments

1. Be interesting what the average wealth of this protest will be compares to others.

2. I feel like Starmer has made an error here.

   Not the actual policy, that is self-evidently obvious and sensible to anyone with a functioning brain and the ability to read. No, the problem is that he’s triggered the full farmer backlash in return for highly minimal practical returns.

   In for a penny, in for a pound, I say. Remove most of the subsidies and special treatments, let all the pointless and unsustainable farms die and replace them with proper modern alternatives if farming is viable, or just build energy infrastructure or housing if not. Start explicitly calling those entirely dependent on state funding welfare queens. Introduce a standard fine of £100k for each undocumented worker they are caught employing.

   Give them something proper to cry about.

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4. Petty Revenge for the farmers protests in recent years ?

5. Striking will kill them far quicker than the APR changes IMO. The large corporate farms will rub their hands at the opportunity to fill the gap at a price premium, and supermarkets will be hesitant to deal with smaller farmers going forward.

6. The Irony is that it’s because of likes of Jeremy Clarkson others who love to talk about supporting British Farmers that this tax was introduced.

   Clarkson has admitted twice in his column that he purchased his farm purely to avoid paying tax.

   Many “Celebrities” and Businesses men including the James Dyson of Brexit fame have been using a loophole to purchase vasts amounts of farmland to avoid paying taxes.

7. Well done Farmers! Absolutely a joke on IHT. Selling off family farms increases the rich/poor divide – who benefits? Developers and large scale conglomerates. Further adding more risk on our global reliance for food.

8. I was there the last time farm hands turned up for a protest in London against the fox hunting ban… tried to storm Parliament and were quite happy to throw hands at Police. Didn’t like it when they got a baton strike back at them.

9. I am directly affected by this tax and it’s worrying me to death. I don’t get paid a wage on the farm because of a huge mortgage and the tax bill when the old man dies would be £600,000.

   How do they expect anyone to be able to afford it? We will have to sell at least 60-70 acres of land which would make the farm unviable anyway.

10. Big up the farmers. People on Reddit seem so pissed off about the sale of all of the UK’s other assets to foreign companies, well this is the last one still majority owned by British people owning their own land. This tax will force them to sell half their farms to survive, making them unviable. It’s gonna hit a lot more people than the initial claims

11. Be interesting how many people are arrested for blocking the roads and blockading national infrastructure

12. I can’t wait for the hundreds of comments about how we should treat these protestors like terrorists and throw the full weight of the law at them due to the potential risk of blocking or delaying an ambulance.

13. Can’t say I agree with the farmers but regardless of where farmers are from they stand on business, you have to respect it

14. Happy to play the game of capitalism as long as it’s someone else getting shafted.

15. The main problem farmers face is the power of supermarkets to drive down prices. Unfortunately, people also don’t want to pay more for food. We basically need fairtrade for British farmers.

    And yes this is about closely a long known loophole used by wealthier individuals to avoid tax. I know somebody complaining about this. There parents own a small farm. They don’t farm it but rent out the land. Get lots of things on the cheap being tax deductible and subsidies. Literally don’t do any farming but apparently they should not pay the same tax as everybody else.

16. There’s been so much that the farming community could have been getting organised and protesting about over the last decade, e.g. the way they are treated by supermarkets, or the terrible trade deal with Australia.

    Why is it this that has finally brought the farmers out? Is it just the last straw? (no pun intended)

17. It amazes me how dense the average redditor who supports this tax change is. It always boils down to “I’m poor, so why shouldn’t everyone else be?”

    We are on the brink of WW3, and year after year, we have underperformed harvests thanks to climate change. Do you not believe in having any form of food security?
    We should be growing farms not destroying them

    Who do you think is buying these farms once they fail? It’s property developers who want to put up more shanty towns in the countryside, which only serves to weaken the food security of the country. – congratulations in your quest to make sure that a farmer isn’t asset rich but cash poor. You have just made multiple capitalists rich instead.

    I don’t know how anyone can even justify inheritance tax on a moral basis. You are taxed when you earn money, taxed when you spend money, taxed when you invest money, and you get taxed in death, at a time when the family is grieving the taxman says ” we want that”

18. To hell with the Met Police. They’re only concerned with protecting foreign invaders.

19. Its breathtaking how many people in this sub, the same people who moaned about the tories and the self harm of brexit, can be so stupid and driven by misplaced envy that they cant see how charging people, who dont have piles of cash, large somes of money to simply continue owning the family farm could possibly have damaging impacts to our food production. As well as increased costs and CO2 from relying more on imports as the world looks even more unstable by the month.

    But no, they appear to be doing better then me so fuck um. Utter morons.

20. Why is it that farmers think they’re the only special case who should be exempt from a tax all the rest of us have to pay?

21. So some rich prick that can afford the tax can just go find some other way to avoid it all together meanwhile the farmers will be stuck with this tax when their already struggling.

    Basically the government could see struggling farmers and a few tax evaders and said fuck um all if they wint pay well make the farmers.

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